Wil Wheaton, The Geek Who Hates

[Note: This is an interesting story that Instapundit linked to and must have put the site over its bandwidth limit. It’s mostly reprinted here because we caught a cached version of the original.]

Jimmie Bise at The Sundries Shack points out a celebrity who isn’t just down on Chick-fil-A, but on the millions of people who attended Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.

…[T]here is one shining exemplar of tolerance and love, one man whose devotion to Ghandi-esque peaceful engagement deserves a special mention. His name is Wheaton and this is what he wrote today on Twitter.

For the record, I like what Wil Wheaton has done with his career over the past few years. It’s not his fault he spent years portraying Ensign Wesley Crusher, a character so whiny and arrogant he made Bill Paxton’s Private Hicks appear stoic by comparison. Young actors don’t necessarily get to change the characters they play and plenty of young actors got locked into bad careers because they played bad roles. Wheaton could have fallen into the same typecasting trap that befell many of his Star Trek: The Next Generation cast-mates, but he didn’t. He spent many years learning how to laugh at himself, how to embrace his geek audience, and how to use his own interests to rebuild a career that moved away from Star Trek and into other new areas. He is the creator and host of a very good webcast called Tabletop, part of an excellent creative team at Geek and Sundry, and has an acting career of which he can be proud. Wheaton has become an Alpha Geek, someone whose work ethic, adaptability, and lack of ego a kid could emulate.

That is why I’m puzzled that he would risk all he’s built with such a repugnant and extremist Tweet. His bizarre opinion, given proud voice, puts him at odds not only with most of his audience and most of the nation but also runs afoul of his own advice for the rest of us. I had thought him smarter and a tad more humble than that but obviously he’s not.

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About The Author

Doug Johnson is a news junkie and long time blog reader, turned author.

warnertoddhuston

Wheaton’s apology was just as ill informed as is original tweet. Chick-Fil-A has supported NO “hate” groups. None.

jim_m

If you don’t actively support gay marriage you are by the left’s definition a hater. If you are a group that opposes gay marriage the left considers you a hate group. I am sure that the SPLC categorized Mr Cathy in the same column as the American Nazi Party and the KKK.

http://www.planetpeschel.com Bill Peschel

Wouldn’t that depend on whether you believe homosexuality is reversible? If you believe that it’s hardwired, then programs that encourage you to think otherwise causes trauma and self-loathing. That might not be hateful in a direct sense, but it is damaging.

jim_m

No it wouldn’t. Why people are gay has nothing to do with whether or not we should allow gay marriage.

But I do love how the gay community fought for years against the idea that people were made that way because they felt it was branding them as deformed or diseased. They militated that being gay was a choice.

Then they decided that if they were made that way, they could argue that they had no choice and they should receive special protected minority status. Suddenly it became imperative to prove that there was a “gay gene”.

People do leave the gay lifestyle. There is no denying that fact. That suggests that either it really is a choice or that if it is not a choice, that choice can override the hardwired inclination.

Either way I really don’t care. It’s not my problem. I don’t give a damn if you are gay or not, just stop asking me to approve of your lifestyle. I don’t. That doesn’t mean that I hate you . It really does mean that I don’t care what you do in your spare time. It just doesn’t mean anything to me.

In brief: If it doesn’t bother you, why do you oppose gay marriage? It’s like athiests opposing religion.

As for activists, they’re like politicians from both parties, saying whatever they think will get them to their goals.

What I do know is several gay couples in long-running relationships, some with kids, who are married in everything but name. Because they’re not, they suffer inequalities — when partners are hospitalized, when one partner dies — and that’s reason enough for me to favor it.

(And BTW, I also support Chick-fil-A’s right to do what they want without being threatened by politicians and C-list actors).

http://www.rustedsky.net JLawson

For me – I’m indifferent.

But indifference to the matter isn’t allowed, or so it would seem, for the indifferent are branded haters and bigots also.

As it is, my sympathy for the gay marriage folks is somewhat diminishing. Dammit, I don’t care, it’s none of my business what direction your plumbing points. Don’t FORCE me to care, because you aren’t helping your case in my opinion by forcing me to care by being annoying, in-your-face assholes.

(Man, can’t THAT be taken in more than one way… Sigh.)

“Because they’re not, they suffer inequalities — when partners are hospitalized, when one partner dies — and that’s reason enough for me to favor it.”

Bullshit. Simple, rank, smelly bullshit, designed to appeal to emotion.

Fill out the proper paperwork. There’s these odd things called ‘wills’ that determines what happens when a partner dies. There’s this funny thing called ‘durable power of attorney’ for financial matters, and a ‘Medical Power of Attorney” for health matters. There’s also joint accounts on financial matters, with rights of survivorship.

These things make sense whether you can marry or not if you’re long-term permanent with a spouse or partner. Get the paperwork together, keep it updated, and you’ve got your rights and privileges legally.

And man, I sure wish my folks had had them updated. Turns out a will in New Mexico from 1978 wasn’t valid in my state in 2011, especially when the real property in it was long since sold….

herddog505

JLawson – [M]y sympathy for the gay marriage folks is somewhat diminishing. Dammit, I don’t care, it’s none of my business what direction your plumbing points. Don’t FORCE me to care, because you aren’t helping your case in my opinion by forcing me to care by being annoying, in-your-face assholes. I agree. I have sympathy for gays and I am not opposed to gay marriage (or something like it). However, my sympathy takes a nosedive when I see them (well, some of them) acting like whiny children, bullies, and despots.

jim_m

I don’t believe in Gay Marriage because I happen to believe in a culture that has survived for several thousand years. Marriage means something and it isn’t two guys or two girls screwing each other. You want the benefits of marriage? Get a civil union law passed granting you the same secular rights.

People aren’t fooling when they say that the next step after gay marriage becomes the law is suing churches for discrimination because the churches want to stand by their beliefs. That is the strategy of radical gays. It isn’t that they want what straight people have. It’s that they want to destroy what straight people have.

Other than that have fun in your private life. Keep it private like everyone else does.

Jerzey George

Its simple really, 1 man + 1woman = 1child. Humanity survives because of this simple process. Society as a whole rewards the union of man and wife to ensure survival with the title of Marriage. Its the inability of a small percentage of the population to just accept the simple fact of who they are. All the rest is just obfuscation.

jim_m

Actually you need something more like 2.1 children to maintain replacement rate, but your point is otherwise correct.

http://www.wizbangblog.com David Robertson

Now I know how Wheaton was able to play such an obnoxious character on the TV series Eureka. He simply had to be himself.

superdestroyer

When the organized homosexuals groups say jump in Hollywood, Wil Wheaton is smart enough to know to ask “how high.”

When everyone realizes that the Chik-Fil-A controversy is a powerplay by organized homosexual groups then everything makes sense. Homosexuals groups are letting everyone private business owner know that there business, employees, and even family will be economically harm if those private business owners do not do what militant homosexauls demand.

AndrewX

I sort of disagree. I don’t think gay groups “organized” the actions of mayors Menino, Emmanuel, et al ( hey I could be wrong), I tend to think one said it just because that was his natural impulse as a leftist with power, a second heard it and piled on, etc etc. I think they (gay rights groups) would not for a second think they would get the kind of reaction they got, a reaction that, it must be repeatedly emphasized, was NOT about “gay marriage”, but WAS about the totalitarian nature of the mayors’ actions. So now we see (watching amusedly) as they scramble around trying to limit the damage.

Hey maybe they did do it from the start, and twisted mayor arms to get the ball rolling, how can I know… But ‘Occam’s Razor’ is a real thing, and it is all to easy to get conspiritorial about events, when so many times history is made like a derecho storm….. by forces that come together by fluke, and then when you’re in the middle of it, everyone rightly says: “Where the hell did THIS come from?”

http://phelps.donotremove.net Phelps

It’s not organized. It’s stochiastic communication. It doesn’t require direct communication. When Wil saw an ally anti-christian hate group point to the quote, that told him he needed to do a two-minute hate.

herddog505

I’m puzzled that he would risk all he’s built with such a repugnant and extremist Tweet.

1. It’s not repuganant to liberals, the dominant group in Hollywood and therefore in Wheaton’s professional life. It’s no more repugnant to them than a shouted “Barry sucks!” would be to a party full of drunk College Republicans;

2. Actors and actresses are like anybody else: they have opinions that they love to share with everybody (why are WE here, after all!).

superdestroyer – Homosexuals groups are letting everyone private business owner know that there business, employees, and even family will be economically harm if those private business owners do not do what militant homosexauls demand.

I would substitute “liberals” for “homosexual groups” (the latter being a subset of the former), but, otherwise, I agree. Being unable to win reliably at the ballot box, lefties are left with having to bully their way to victory. Whether Wheaton fully agrees with what he wrote or whether he’s simply letting his Hollywood chums know that he’s fully “on your side” for the purposes of his career is an open question.

Vagabond661

Maybe he should have followed it up with “Buzzinga!”

http://opinion.ak4mc.us/ Scribe of Slog (McGehee)

If you start by assuming that the average IQ in Hollywood is well below 100, it all makes sense.

Richard Easbey

In my experience it’s safe to assume that the average IQ in Hollywood hovers around whatever the room temperature is.

http://opinion.ak4mc.us/ Scribe of Slog (McGehee)

Well, they do like their air conditioning out there.

werewife

The scarier part is in the comments to Wheaton’s “apology.” Way too many of them are respectfully disagreeing with him on the grounds that to be, say, a serious Catholic or Baptist IS to be a bigot / dangerous “hater,” and no quarter should be extended. I’m reminded of an anecdote from a rabbi I know: Once he brought his pious Catholic secretary to shul to see what he did for a living, and she claimed to be astonished that not only did the services NOT include formal declaration of rejecting Jesus, Jesus wasn’t mentioned at all! Lefties seem to feel similarly: as if Christian services are spent cursing “queers and commies.” I swear, if Obama is reelected, things could get very scary in this country as all traditionally religious (except radical Muslim) believers are called upon to recant aspects of their beliefs publically if they want to keep municipal / state / federal jobs, and it’ll only begin there. Please tell me I’m paranoid.

http://www.planetpeschel.com Bill Peschel

I remember talking to a fellow parishioner after services, and she gave me the “of course you know, Catholics aren’t real Christians” line, which shocked me because we members of an Episcopalian church.

I, too, went through the comments on Wil’s site, and thought, “do i want to jump into this? Where do I start to deal with all this misinformation?” These people are lost. I’m not convinced that any of these religious “haters” (to usurp their phrase) have even stepped into a church. To most of them it’s as if all churches were just a different flavor of Westburo Baptist.

Wil Wheaton might be approachable, and I’m thinking of drafting a personal email to him, outlining that “pro-traditional marriage” isn’t the same as “hate.”

http://www.rustedsky.net JLawson

Good luck with that. Try pointing out to him that liking steak isn’t the same thing as hating vegetarians. One doesn’t automatically mean the other.

Vagabond661

It’s easier to convince someone who likes mayonnaise that Miracle Whip is better.